1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to powers supply circuits and related components, and is particularly directed to a DC-DC regulator including a synthetic ripple voltage generator which generates an artificial or synthesized ripple waveform that controls the switching operation of the regulator, reduces output ripple and improves DC accuracy.
2. Description of the Related Art
Electrical power for integrated circuits is typically supplied by one or more direct current (DC) power sources. In a number of applications the circuit may require multiple regulated voltages that are different from he available supply voltage (which may be relatively low e.g., on the order of a few volts or less, particularly where low current consumption is desirable, such as in portable, battery-powered devices). Moreover, in many applications the load current may vary over several orders of magnitude. To address these requirements it has been common practice to employ pulse or ripple-based regulators, such as a hysteresis or ‘bang-bang’ regulator.
Such a ripple-based DC-DC voltage regulator employs a relatively simple control mechanism and provides a fast response to a load transient. The switching of the ripple regulator is asynchronous, which is advantageous in applications where direct control of the switching edges is desired. For this purpose, a ripple regulator typically employs a hysteresis comparator or the like that controls a gate drive circuit coupled to the control or gate drive inputs of a pair of electronic power switching devices, such as FETs or MOSFETS or the like. The gate drive circuit controllably switches or turns the switching devices on and off in accordance with a pulse width modulation (PWM) switching waveform as known to those skilled in the art.
In such a hysteretic or ‘bang-bang’ regulator, the output PWM signal waveform produced by hysteresis comparator transitions to a first state (e.g., goes high) when the output voltage falls below a reference voltage minus the comparator's inherent hysteresis voltage and the comparator's PWM output transitions to a second state (e.g., goes low) when the output voltage exceeds the reference voltage plus the hysteresis voltage. The application of or increase in load causes the output voltage to decrease below the reference voltage, in response to which the comparator triggers the gate drive to turn on the upper switching device. Because the regulator is asynchronous, the gate drive control signal does not wait for a synchronizing clock, as is common in most fixed frequency PWM control schemes.
Principal concerns with this type of ripple regulator include large ripple voltage, DC voltage accuracy, and switching frequency. Since the hysteretic comparator directly sets the magnitude of the ripple voltage, employing a smaller hysteresis voltage reduces the power conversion efficiency, as switching frequency increases with smaller hysteresis. In order to control the DC output voltage, which is a function of the ripple wave shape, the peaks and valleys of the output ripple voltage are regulated. The DC value of the output voltage is a function of the PWM duty factor. The output voltage wave shape also changes at light loads, when current through the output inductor becomes discontinuous, producing relatively short ‘spikes’ between which are relatively long periods of low voltage. Since the ripple voltage wave shape varies with input line and load conditions, maintaining tight DC regulation is difficult.
In addition, improvements in capacitor technology changes the ripple wave shape. In particular, the current state of ceramic capacitor technology has enabled the equivalent series resistance or ESR (which produces the piecewise linear or triangular wave shape of the output voltage waveform) of ceramic capacitors to be reduced to very low values. At very low values of ESR, however, the output voltage's ripple shape changes from triangular to a non-linear shape (e.g., parabolic and sinusoidal). This causes the output voltage to overshoot the hysteretic threshold, and results in higher peak-to-peak ripple. As a result, the very improvements that were intended to lower the output voltage ripple in DC-DC regulators can actually cause increased ripple when used in a ripple regulator.